Fabulous b&w.

Nice how the dead shrub's form dominates the frame but you've been able to include more distant clumpings top right for context.

So desolate. Those weeds(?) remind me of Crown of Thorns starfish creeping across an expanse of degraded reef. Is this a very recent fire ground?

No need for you to visit Oz with scenes like this! Lovely tones and texture.

nope they just came up on their own. there was no fence either. we (the whole fam) were all out in their field (with the rancher we had just met). i should have processed this better but was in a rush to post it in the photo association game before i missed the chance...

thanks.
Thought i could improve on the version posted way back when on flickr but in comparing the two, thinking the old version still wins..

Thanks all.
@Rod - it was only deliberately not dealt with haha.. I did see it but to correct it would have been more work than I deemed it worth. For starters I oversharpened in Rawtherapee on the whole batch of shots. So I'd have needed to start over at the first stage. Then when I did the bw in Nik-Sfx, the drop of the sky caused the haloing to pronounce and I would have needed to go back and do control points to try and soften the contrast at the edges. Either that or I'd have had to do some hi-mag cloning/healing/painting in Gimp.

If I had known this image was going to be the best received of the batch, I probably would have made not only that effort, but would have taken the time to blend in the horizon gradation better as well.

I'm with the family on this one. That moon is so tiny!

Striking image! Jack's beanstalk, is it??

Contrasty as I like it, too

I reckon the fam. made a good call. The contrast is striking as is the vertical light gradation, and you couldn't have got greater depth if you tried - the Moon's just big enough to have impact. The right hand edge of the tree tunk is haloed but in this instance doesn't distract. Deliberate? No way my iPhone could deliver this.